5

Now there was dead silence, except for the swirling of rain.

Jean and Davis exchanged glances. Bob sat open-mouthed, looking up. Crystal regarded her father as though this were some sort of joke in bad taste.

"What on earth are you talking about?" asked Crystal.

"Never see us again?" Bob forced out the words incredulously.

"Forget I said that, for the moment," Manning urged. "Try to forget it! Mr. Betterton (you remember my lawyer?) has phoned to say he can't get here until nine o'clock. But we don't need him yet Let's concentrate on providing for the future."

Manning sat back in his chair, his fingertips together, his vivid blue eyes veiled yet his whole imposing presence concentrated.

"Let's take you first, Crystal. You're the oldest"

"Dad, I insist on knowing..." Crystal began shakily. There was a very faint gleam of tears in her eyes.

"I don't think," said Manning, "I need worry about you financially. You, or more probably your own lawyer, can show real genius at getting alimony. If you really want one of those estates at Sandy Reach on the Sound"—he nodded toward the back of the house—"why don't you buy it yourself?"

Crystal was startled. "Buy...?"

Her father laughed.

"You're quite consistent, Crystal," he said. "It has simply never occurred to you, never once in your life, to buy anything for yourself when you could get some man to buy it for you. And yet," he hesitated, "I may be misjudging you, even now. As for you, Bob..."

Bob, hands on knees and gaze on the floor, made an inarticulate noise.

"Look, Dad," he said with an effort. "You don't understand me. I don't understand you. Can't we just skip it?"

"Unfortunately, no. And don't use that damnable term 'skip it'" Manning's voice softened. "You're twenty-two. You must decide what you want to do in life. Why do you say I don't understand you?"

Bob's voice struggled in his throat

"Books!" he blurted out "Books and books and books! If somebody doesn't give a damn about books, you look at him as if he was dirt"

"I'm sorry, Bob. But we were speaking about your future. Do you think you could succeed as a professional ballplayer?"

After perhaps twenty seconds Bob raised a haggard face. "No," he said flatly. "I'm just not good enough."

What an effort it cost him to say that, perhaps only Cy Norton guessed. Cy wanted to blurt out something encouraging. But Bob had turned his face away.

"Then may I make another suggestion?" asked Manning. "Suppose I set you up in the most modern kind of garage, as sole owner and proprietor?"

Bob's gangling length turned round in his chair.

"You don't mean that!" he said incredulously.

"Shall any son of mine," Manning asked gently, "be too proud to work with his hands? I was so sure you'd agree that I've already bought the garage. Mr. Betterton is bringing out the papers tonight"

Bob opened his mouth and shut it again. He moistened dry lips. His face now seemed all wrinkles under the sandy hair.

"Look, Dad. I never thought..."

"Why didn't you ever come and speak to me?"

Bob shied away from this as he had shied away from the very notion. Yet evidently some other thought gnawed uppermost in his mind.

"Oh, forget the garage!" he mumbled. "What’s this about—not seeing you again?"

"Yes!" Crystal breathed quickly.

Manning ignored them both. He was again as cold and impersonal as a judge.

"And finally," he said, "we come to the future of the youngest Jean."

Huntington Davis, sitting bolt upright on the sofa, had his arm round Jean's shoulder.

"Forgive me, sir." Davis spoke with dignity. "But you needn't trouble about Jean's future. I can take care of that"

"Can you, now?" inquired Manning, with a good deal of sarcasm. "Knowing your position at your father's office, I doubt it"

"Well, but I happen to know your financial position, too. When you leave us forever..."

"Oh, stop this!" protested Crystal. She rose to her feet, bumping against the cocktail table. "You talk as though Dad were going to die!"

"Maybe he is," interposed a new voice.

Jean half-stifled a scream. But, when they turned towards the door to the hall, there was a very slight lessening of tension.

They had not heard a taxi drive up. They had not heard the front door open and close, or the noise of footsteps in the hall, or the shuffle-clink of coat hangers as somebody put away a dripping raincoat and hat

In the doorway stood a short stocky, square-built man in his early fifties. His thinning black hair, brushed back carefully, did not quite hide his skull. He gave an impression of hairiness, though his squarish face was clean-shaven, genial but uncommunicative, with a keen look over a pair of rimless pince-nez. Cy Norton would not have liked to play poker with him.

"Hello, Mr. Betterton," said Jean without inflection.

Howard Betterton, Manning's lawyer, smiled faintly.

"Sorry to be so melodramatic," he apologized. "But I felt I had to be melodramatic, considering what’s out in the hall."

For one terrifying instant, in the imaginations of several persons...

"No, nothing very frightening," Betterton told them dryly. He seemed immediately to sense their mood, of not its cause.

"What's in the hall?"

Cy could never afterwards remember who asked that question.

"At the foot of the stairs, where anybody can fall over it," replied Betterton, "somebody's left an old Gladstone bag plastered with foreign labels. And on top of it is a .38 revolver."

"A revolver!" exclaimed Crystal. "Thafs impossible!" .

All of them burst out protests as though the presence of a revolver were as impossible as that of a stray lion.


Sir Henry Merrivale, who throughout the whole conversation had remained silent, with the corners of his mouth drawn down, suddenly began to struggle out of his chair.

"Y'know," he said, "I expect that bag belongs to me. But how in Satan's name did it get here?"

"I don't know!" declared Manning, in reply to several glances. "What about the revolver?"

"H.M.!" called Cy, in a cold and significant' voice. "Hey?"

"This afternoon, during the—the affair in the subway," Cy demanded, "you didn't by any chance pinch that cop's gun?"

"Honest, son, I didn't," said H.M., with obvious truth. Then he looked somewhat annoyed with himself. "Y’know, I never thought of it."

And out he lumbered into the hall. Howard Betterton, in his conservative dark suit and black tie, moved softly across the room.

"What has been happening here?" he asked. "What's upset everybody?"

"I’ll tell you," said Jean. "I’ll challenge Dad, if nobody else will!"

"Jean!" her father said sharply.

But the girl could not be stopped. She stood now in the middle of the room, her golden hair trembling as her body trembled.

"He's going to run away with Irene Stanley." Jean's clear, light voice rose above the noise of the rain. "What's more"—the wild words of that afternoon leaped to her lips—"he's going to turn into smoke and vanish in front of our eyes."

Crystal looked round the room.

"The poor dear girl is drunk," Crystal observed offhandedly.

"Jean!" growled Bob. "Take it easy!"

"But that's just what he's going to do!" said Jean. She looked at her father. "Aren't you?"

This was the point at which Sir Henry Merrivale, to get more light, appeared at the door of the drawing room and examined a revolver. Cy Norton watched him, though nobody else appeared to do so. The revolver was not a Colt .38 police-positive, as Cy half expected. It looked like an old Smith and Wesson single action, in blue finish.

H.M., to get still more light, turned his back and opened the magazine. By the gleam of cartridge cases, you could see it was loaded.

"Aren’t you?" Jean challenged her father again.

"'Vanish in front of our eyes!' Really, now!" scoffed Crystal. But her soft chin trembled. She looked at Manning. "Of course this is all hysterical nonsense? It isn't true?"

"Yes, my dear," Manning replied. "What Jean says is true."

H.M. closed the cylinder of the revolver with a sharp click.

"You had better hear that," Manning continued, "in case you think I'm dead or hurt But if s all you will hear, unless"—his vivid blue eyes fastened on Jean—"you've guessed something more about my plans?"

"No, I haven't," Jean answered. She added, as the compelling eyes still did not move, "Really and truly!"

"Good. I think that is satisfactory," nodded Manning.

Slapping his knees, he got up from the chair and he looked round with a maddening smile.

"What I am going to do," he added, "is in one sense dangerous"—he flexed his muscles—"but in another sense absurdly simple. And nobody knows it except myself. The secret is locked up"— he touched his forehead—"here. Are you following me, Sir Henry?"

H.M., who had somehow managed to hide the revolver, watched him with fists on hips and a dubious scowl.

"Oh, I'm following you," he growled. "You challenged me, son. Tell me: where are you goin' to disappear from?"

"Ah!" Manning shook his head. "I'm afraid that would be telling too much."

"All right. When are you goin' to disappear?"

A rush of emotion surged into Manning's face. He repressed it immediately. But Sir Henry Merrivale saw affection, and hope, and even a kind of wistfulness, as he looked at the children of whom—whether he swore it or not—he was so obviously fond now.

"Oh, I shall disappear when you least expect it," Manning answered. "Shall we go in to dinner?"



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